Philosophy Question

A philosophy professor gave 1 question for the final exam. The class was seated when the prof touched his chair and asked: "Using everything we've learned this sem, prove that this chair does NOT EXIST." The whole class answered for an hour but the laziest student finished in less than a minute...
One week later, the grades were posted and the class wondered because the lazy student got the highest score...
His answer consisted of just two words: "What chair?"
Don't over analyze or complicate things.

Why the wedding ring should be worn on the 4th finger

Quite Interesting! !!!...

Please follow the steps given below :

Firstly, put your palms together. Bend the centre fingers and put them together back to back.
Next, join the other fingers tips to tips

The game begins now.

Try to open your thumbs ... The thumbs represent parents. It can be opened because our parents will leave us one day.
Please join the thumbs again.

Then open the second fingers, these fingers represent brothers and sisters.
They too will have their own families, and will leave us too.
Now join the second fingers again.

Next, open up the little fingers. These represent your children. Sooner or later they too will leave us as they will have their own lives to lead.
Nevertheless, join back the little fingers.

Now, try and separate the fourth fingers, on which we put our wedding ring.
You will be surprised to find that it cannot be opened at all. This is because it represents husband and wife. Real love will stick together forever.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -----------
Thumb represents parents
Second finger represents brothers & sisters
Centre finger represents own self
Fourth finger represents your partner
Last finger represents your children

Grappling with God

The following article is located at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/39054

Grappling with God

Prayer sometimes feels like a hug and a stranglehold at the same time.

Philip Yancey | posted 10/20/2006 08:39AM

The church I attend reserves a brief time in which people in the pews can voice aloud their prayers. Over the years, I have heard hundreds of these prayers, and with very few exceptions, the word polite applies. One, however, stands out in my memory because of its raw emotion.

In a clear but wavering voice, a young woman began with the words, "God, I hated you after the rape! How could you let this happen to me?" The congregation abruptly fell silent. No more rustling of papers or shifting in seats. "And I hated the people in this church who tried to comfort me. I didn't want comfort. I wanted revenge. I wanted to hurt back. I thank you, God, that you didn't give up on me, and neither did some of these people. You kept after me, and I come back to you now and ask that you heal the scars in my soul."

Of all the prayers I have heard in church, this one most resembles the style of testy prayers I find replete in the Bible, especially those from God's favorites such as Abraham and Moses.

The Bargainer

Abraham, a man rightly celebrated for his faith, heard from God in visions, in one-on-one conversations, and even in a personal visit to his tent. God dangled before him glowing promises, one of which stuck in his craw: the assurance that he would father a great nation. Abraham was 75 when he first heard that promise, and over the next few years, God upped the ante with hints of offspring as bountiful as the dust of the earth and the stars in the sky.

Meanwhile, nature took its course, and at an age when he should have been patting the heads of great-grandchildren, Abraham remained childless. He knew he had few years of fertility left, if any. At the age of 86, per his barren wife Sarah's suggestion, he followed the ancient custom of having intercourse with his wife's servant to produce an heir.

The next time God visited, that offspring, a son named Ishmael, was a teenage outcast wandering the desert, a victim of Sarah's jealousy. Abraham laughed aloud at God's reiterated promise, and by now, sarcasm was creeping into his response: "Will a son be born to a man 100 years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90?" Sarah shared the bitter joke, muttering, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"

God responded with a message that to Abraham's ears must have sounded like good news and bad news both. He would indeed father a child, but only after performing minor surgery on the part of his body necessary for the deed. Abraham becomes the father of circumcision as well as of Isaac.

That pattern of feint and thrust, of Abraham standing up to God only to get knocked down again, forms the background for a remarkable prayer, actually an extended dialogue between God and Abraham. "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" God begins, as if recognizing that a valid partnership requires consultation before any major decision. Next, God unveils his plan to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, notorious for their wickedness and moral pollution of Abraham's extended family.

By now, Abraham has learned his role in the partnership, and he makes no attempt to conceal his outrage. "Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the judge of all the earth do right?"

Then ensues a bargaining session much like what occurs in any Middle Eastern bazaar. What if there are 50 righteous persons in the city, will you spare it? All right, if I can find 50 righteous, I'll spare the whole place. With a jolt, Abraham remembers who he's bargaining with—Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes—but proceeds to lower his request to 45 persons.

Forty-five? No problem. May the Lord not be angry. … Now that I have been so bold—Abraham bows and scrapes, then continues to press. Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten? Each time God concedes without argument, concluding, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."

Although ten righteous people could not be found to save Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham got what he really wanted, deliverance for his nephew and grandnieces. And we readers are left with the tantalizing fact that Abraham quit asking before God quit granting.

What if Abraham had bargained even harder and asked that the cities be spared for the sake of one righteous person, his nephew Lot? Was God, so quick to concede each point, actually looking for an advocate, a human being bold enough to express God's own deepest instinct of mercy?

As Abraham learned, when we appeal to God's grace and compassion, the fearsome God soon disappears. "The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion" (Num. 14:18). God is more merciful than we can imagine and welcomes appeals to that mercy.

Arguing with God

Skip forward half a millennium when another master bargainer appears on the scene. God, who has "remembered his covenant with Abraham," handpicks a man with the perfect résumé for a crucial assignment. Moses has spent half his life learning leadership skills from the ruling empire of the day and half his life learning wilderness survival skills while fleeing a murder rap. Who better to lead a tribe of freed slaves through the wilderness to the Promised Land?

So as to leave no room for doubt, God introduces himself via an unnatural phenomenon: a fiery bush that does not burn up. Appropriately, Moses hides his face, afraid to look, as God announces the mission: "The cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Unlike Abraham, Moses turns argumentative from the very first meeting. He tries false humility: Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh? When that fails, he marshals other objections: I don't know your name … and what if the Israelites don't believe me … I have never been eloquent. God patiently answers each one, orchestrating a few miracles to establish credibility. Still, Moses begs off: O Lord, please send someone else to do it. God's patience runs out and his anger flares, but even so God suggests a compromise, a shared role with Moses' brother Aaron. The famous Exodus from Egypt thus gets under way only after an extended bargaining session.

Moses puts that knack for negotiation, that chutzpah, to a supreme test sometime later when God's patience with the tribe truly has run out. After watching ten plagues descend on Egypt, after walking away from slavery scot-free and burdened by plunder, after seeing a pharaoh's state-of-the-art army swept under water, after following a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, after receiving miraculous supplies of water and food (some of it digesting in their bellies at that very moment)—after all that, the Israelites grow afraid, or bored, or "stiff-necked" in God's diagnosis, and reject it all in favor of a golden idol made for them by Moses' sidekick brother, the very Aaron God had recruited by way of compromise.

God has had quite enough. "Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they." Moses knows well the destructive power God can unleash, for he has seen it firsthand in Egypt. "Let me alone," God says! Moses hears that remark less as a command than as the sigh of a beleaguered parent who has reached the end of a tether, yet somehow wants to be pulled back—in other words, an opening stance for negotiation.

Moses rolls out the arguments. Look at all you went through delivering them from Egypt. What about your reputation? Think of how the Egyptians will gloat! Don't forget your promises to Abraham. Moses flings down a sack of God's own promises. For 40 days and 40 nights, he lies prostrate before the Lord, refusing food and drink. At last, God yields: "Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way." Moses proceeds to win that argument, too, as God reluctantly agrees to accompany the Israelites the rest of the way.

Sometime later, the tables have turned. This time Moses is the one ready to resign. Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers? And this time it is God who responds with compassion, calming Moses, sympathizing with his complaints, and designating 70 elders to share the burden.

Moses did not win every argument with God. Notably, he failed to persuade God to let him enter the Promised Land in person (though that request, too, was granted many years later on the Mount of Transfiguration). But his example, like Abraham's, proves that God invites argument and struggle, and often yields, especially when the point of contention is God's mercy. In the very process of arguing, we may, in fact, take on God's own qualities.

"Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance," writes Archbishop Richard Trench. "It is laying hold of his highest willingness."

A Strange Intimacy

Were Abraham and Moses the only biblical examples of standing toe-to-toe with God, I would hesitate to see in their grappling encounters any kind of model for prayer. They rank, however, as two prime representatives of a style that recurs throughout the Bible. (Perhaps this very trait explains why God chose them for such important tasks?)

The arguments of those two giants of faith seem tame compared to the rants of Job. His three friends speak in platitudes and pious formulas, using the demure language often heard in public prayers at church. They defend God, try to soothe Job's outbursts, and reason their way to accepting the world as it is. Job will have none of it.

He bitterly objects to being the victim of a cruel God. Job speaks to God directly from the heart—a deeply wounded heart. He nearly abandons prayer because, as he tells his mortified friends, "What would we gain by praying to him?" Yet in the ironic twist at the end of Job, God comes down squarely on the side of Job's bare-all approach, dismissing his friends' verbiage with a blast of contempt.

The psalmists likewise complain of God's absence and apparent injustice. One psalm attributed to David captures the spirit:

I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.

A litany of protests in Psalms and in the Prophets remind God that the world is askew, that many promises remain unfulfilled, that justice and mercy do not rule the earth.

A wrestling match also occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus struggled with God's will and accepted it only as a last resort. Later, when God chose the least likely person (a notorious human-rights abuser named Saul of Tarsus) to carry his message to the Gentiles, a church leader voiced dissent: "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem." God cut this particular argument short: "Go! This man is my chosen instrument." Several years later, the same man, now named Paul, himself bargained with God, praying repeatedly for the removal of a physical ailment.

Why would God, the all-powerful ruler of the universe, resort to a style of relating to humans that seems like negotiation—or haggling, to put it crudely? Does God require the exercise as part of our spiritual training regimen? Or is it possible that God, if I may use such language, relies on our outbursts as a window onto the world, or as an alarm that might trigger intervention? It was the cry of the Israelites, after all, that prompted God's call of Moses.

Like Abraham, I approach God at first in fear and trembling, only to learn that God wants me to stop groveling and start arguing. I dare not meekly accept the state of the world, with all its injustice and unfairness. I must call God to account for God's own promises, God's own character.

God-Wrestlers

I used to worry about my deficiency of faith. My attitude is changing, though, as I begin to understand faith as a form of engagement with God. I may not be able to summon up belief in miracles or dream big dreams, but I can indeed exercise my faith by engaging with God in prayer.

I recall a scene from very early in my marriage. We were visiting friends out West who had arranged for us to stay at a four-bedroom guesthouse that had no other occupants at the time. Over dinner, some comment hit one of us the wrong way, and before long, a marital spat had escalated. We sat up late trying to talk it through, but instead of bringing us together, the conversation only moved us further apart. Aware that I had a business meeting the next day, I stormed off from our bedroom to another one in search of peace and sleep.

A few minutes went by, the door opened, and Janet appeared with a new set of arguments supporting her side. I fled to another bedroom. The same thing happened. She would not let me alone! The scene became almost comical: a sulking, introverted husband running away from an insistent, extroverted wife. By the next day (not before), we could both laugh. I learned an important lesson, that not communicating is worse than fighting. In a wrestling match, at least both parties stay engaged.

That image of wrestling evokes one last scene from the Bible, the prototype of struggle with God. Abraham's grandson Jacob has gotten through life by trickery and deceit, and now he must face the consequences in the person of his hot-tempered brother, whom he cheated out of family birthrights. Ridden by fear and guilt, Jacob sends his family and all his possessions on ahead across a river, with elaborate peace offerings to mollify Esau. For 20 years, he has lived in exile. Will Esau greet him with a sword or with an embrace? He shivers alone in the dark, waiting.

Someone bumps him—a man? an angel?—and Jacob does what he has always done. He fights as if his life depends on it. All night the two wrestle, neither gaining the advantage, until at last the first gleam of daybreak brightens the horizon. "Let me go," the figure says, reaching down with a touch so potent it wrenches Jacob's hip socket.

Staggering, overpowered, scared out of his wits, Jacob still manages to hang on. "I will not let you go unless you bless me," he tells the figure. Instead of wrenching his neck with another touch, the figure tenderly bestows on Jacob a new name, Israel, which means "God-wrestler." At last, Jacob learns the identity of his opponent.

A little later, Jacob sees his brother Esau approaching with 400 men and limps forward to meet him. Their own wrestling match began before birth, a tussle in utero. And now the moment of truth has arrived. God-wrestler holds out his arms.

A contemporary Jewish author, Arthur Waskow, wrote in his book Godwrestling that wrestling feels a lot like making love—and like making war. Jacob felt some of each, making love and making war, with the elusive figure in the night and with hairy Esau in the day. From a distance, it's hard to distinguish a stranglehold from a hug.

God does not give in easily. Yet at the same time, God seems to welcome the persistence that keeps on fighting long after the match has been decided. Perhaps Jacob learned for the first time, that long night by the riverside, how to transform struggle into love. "To see your face is like seeing the face of God," Jacob told his brother, words unimaginable had he not met God face to face the night before.

Although Jacob did many things wrong in life, he became the eponym for a tribe and a nation as well as for all of us who wrestle with God. We are all children of Israel, implied Paul, all of us God-wrestlers who cling to God in the dark, who chase God from room to room, who declare, "I will not let you go." To us belong the blessing, the birthright, the kingdom.

"Prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude of a wrestler with God," concluded E. M. Bounds, who wrote eight books on prayer. Our no-holds-barred outbursts hardly threaten God, and sometimes they even seem to change him.

As the touch on Jacob's hip socket proved, God could have ended the match at any point during that long night in the desert. Instead, the elusive figure lingered, as eager to be held as Jacob was to hold.

This excerpt has been adapted from Philip Yancey's latest book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Zondervan).

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Yancey's Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? is available from ChristianBook.com and other book retailers.

Books & Culture, a Christianity Today sister publication also excerpted the book. Today's Christian, another sister publication, interviewed Yancey. Publishers Weekly's Religion Bookline also interviewed Yancey about the book.

Zondervan's site for the book includes an author tour schedule and an excerpt.

More on prayer is available from our Prayer & Spirituality full coverage area.

A decade of Yancey's Christianity Todaycolumns are available on our site.

© 1994-2006 Christianity Today International

Parable of The Tuyo, Tinapa and Galunggong

Three construction workers were on top of their half-finished skyscraper.

"Rrrrring!" the lunch bell sounded, and the three men sat on a steel beamJutting out of the 56th floor with their lunch boxes in hand.
The first guy opens his and groans in exasperation, "Tuyo!"There is not a day that I don't get tuyo for lunch!"
He turns to his buddies and announces, "Mark my words. If I still get tuyo tomorrow, I'm going to throw myself from this building."
The second guy opens his lunch box and moans, "Tinapa". Everyday, I get tinapa!"
He looks at his friends and declares, "Believe me when I say this. If I get tinapa tomorrow, I'm going to jump and kill myself."
The third guy opens his lunch box and it was his turn to despair. "Galunggong". All I get is galunggong!" I'm telling you, if I still get galunggong tomorrow, I'm going to jump from this building and die."
The next day, the lunch bell rings and all three men are again seated on the 56th floor.
The first guy opens his lunch box and starts crying, "Tuyoooooo!"
And so he jumps and crashes on the ground.
The second guy opens his lunch box and wails loudly,"Tinapaaaa!"
And he also hurls himself off the building and dies.
The third guy opens his lunch box and screams, "Galunggonggggg!"
And so he too jumps off the building and splatters on the ground.

Days later, during the funeral of the three men, their three wives embrace and weep together.
The first wife cries out, "I didn't know my husband didn't like tuyo anymore! Why didn't he tell me? If only he told me, I would have prepared something else."
The second wife echoes her statement, "Yes! If only I knew, I would have cooked something else, not tinapa!"
The third wife, between sobs, speaks up, "I don't know why my husband killed himself."
The two wives look at her curiously. "Why?"
She went on, "Because ... my husband prepares his own lunch everyday..."

I love this crazy story because it presents a very important truth:
All of us prepare our own lunch. If we don't like our jobs, if we don't llike the state of our relationships, if we don't like what's happening to our spiritual lives - we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Because God has given us free will.
He has given us the power to prepare our own lunch.
If you want to earn more and be free from debt, if you're sick and tired of your bad habits, if we want to put more joy in our marriages, if we want to grow in our relationship with God - then go back to your kitchen and prepare yourself another dish.Because you design your own future.You create your own destiny.
Ask yourself what kind of future do you want to have?What kind of millenium?What kind of eternity?
You decide.!!!! "

Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result"

Difference between Friends and Best Friends

friend: call our parents by mr. and mrs.
Best friend: calls your parents dad & mom or tito & tita.

Friend: has never seen you cry
Best friend: has always has the best shoulder to cry on

Friend: never asks for anything to eat or drink
Best friend: opens the fridge & makes herself at home

Friend: asks you to write down your number.
Best friend: they ask you for their number
(cuz they can't remember it)

Friend: borrows your stuff for a few days then gives it back.
Best friend: has a closet full of your stuff

Friend: only knows a few things about you
Best friend: could write a biography on your life story

Friend: will leave you behind if that is what the crowd is doing
Best friend: will always go with you

Friend: will ask where you've been
(after going AWOL)
Best Friend: will say MISS YOU &
goes on being your friend

__________________________________________________
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Can You Sleep While The Wind Blows?

Can You Sleep While The Wind Blows?

Years ago, a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast.
He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic. They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops.
As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals.

Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer.
"Are you a good farm hand?" the farmer asked him.

"Well, I can sleep when the wind blows," answered the little man.

Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired him. The little man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work.


Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore.
Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the little man and yelled, "Get up! A storm is coming! Tie things down before they blow away!"


The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, "No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows."

Enraged by the response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm. To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarpaulins. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred. The shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. Nothing could blow away.

The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed to also sleep while the wind blew.


When you're prepared, spiritually, mentally, and physically,
you have nothing to fear. Can you sleep when the wind blows through your life?


The hired hand in the story was able to sleep because he had secured the farm against the storm.


We secure ourselves against the storms of life by trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and grounding ourselves in the Word of God.


We don't need to understand, we just need to hold
His hand to have peace in the middle of storms.


I hope you enjoy your day and you sleep well.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the people I cannot change,
the Courage to change the one I can, and the Wisdom to know it's me.

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."
- Romans 12:2 (NLT)

http://findingsupergirl.blogspot.com

What Matters Most...

In the mid 1970's, Ed Roberts created the world's first
commercially successful personal computer (PC). He hired a 19 year
old named Bill Gates to write software for him.

Roberts sold his computer business in 1977 and bought a farm. Seven
years later, at age 41, he entered medical school. Today Bill gates
is the head of the largest computer software company in the world.
Ed Roberts is a physician in a small Georgia town.

Roberts says, "The implication is that the PC is the most important
thing I've ever done, and I don't think that's true. Every day I
deal with things that are equally if not more important here with my
patients."

How can we evaluate the significance of our lives? Something deep
inside tells us such a thing cannot be measured by wealth and fame.

As we look at the apostle Paul's turbulent life, it seems
noteworthy that he approached the end with a peaceful sense of
successful completion. He wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I
have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 timothy 4:7) Paul
looked confidently not to the world but to "the Lord, the righteous
Judge" for approval and reward (vs 8).

Since sooner than later we'll face our creator,
Whose gaze pierces through to the heart,
Let's make sure our dreams, our goals and grand schemes
Have Christ in our plans from the start.

The measure of a life is determined by the Ruler of the Universe.

-- Author Unknown

It's the Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got
together to visit their old university lecturer.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work
and life. Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen

and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups:
porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive
and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer
said, �If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were
taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.

While it is

normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the

source of your problems and stress.

"What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you

consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other�s

cups. Now, if LIFE is coffee, then the jobs, money and position

in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain

LIFE, but the quality of LIFE doesn't change. Sometimes, by

concentrating only on the cup, we fail to

enjoy the coffee in it.�

So don't let the cups drive you ... enjoy the coffee instead.

---

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the people I cannot change,
the Courage to change the one I can, and the Wisdom to know it's me.

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."
- Romans 12:2 (NLT)

http://findingsupergirl.blogspot.com

Little League Baseball With a Heart

You've probably seen this in your inbox before. True story or not, it's worth a read.
------------------

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled
children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that
would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a
question: "He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is
the natural order of things in my son?" The audience was stilled by the
query. The father continued. "I believe that when a child like Shay,
physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an
opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes,
in the way other people treat that child." Then he told the following
story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew
were playing baseball. Shay asked,"Do you think they'll let me play?"
Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like
Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were
allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and
some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay
could play, not expecting much. The boy looked around for guidance and
a few boys nodded approval, why not? So he took matters into his own
hands and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth
inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to
bat in the ninth inning."

Shay struggled over to the team's bench put on a team shirt with a
broad smile and his father had a small tear in his eye and warmth in
his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted. In
the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was
still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a
glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way,
he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field,
grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with
two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base
and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let
Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay
was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible
'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less
connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the
pitcher, recognizing the other team putting winning aside for this
moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly
so Shay could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came
and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps
forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in,
Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the
pitcher. The game would now be over, but the pitcher picked up the soft
grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman.
Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the head of the first
baseman, out of reach of all team mates.

Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to
first! Run to first!" Never in his life had Shay ever ran that far but
made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and
startled. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his
breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards >second, gleaming and struggling to
make it to second base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base,
the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team, who had
a chance to be the hero for his team for the first time. He could have
thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the
pitcher's intentions and he too intentionally threw the ball high and
far over the third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base
deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay". When Shay
reached the second base, the opposing shortstop ran to help him and
turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!
Shay, run to third" As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams and
those watching were on their feet were screaming, "Shay, run home!"
Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who
hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his
face, "The boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and
humanity into this world." Shay didn't make it to another summer and
died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his
father so happy and coming home and seeing his mother tearfully embrace
her little hero of the day!

AND, NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY:

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it's
least fortunate amongst them.

Lilies of the Field

This message is from a commencement speech made by a Pulitzer
Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen, at Villanova University.

Lilies Of The Field
-- By Anna Quindlen

I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't
ever confuse the two, your life and your work.

You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one
else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree;
there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living.
But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.

Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or
your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of
your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account but your
soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to
write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a
winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never
to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer
consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to
laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows
mean what they say.

I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would
be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But
I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, or
at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot
be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a
manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.

Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an
aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which
you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside
Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles
over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries
to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which
you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember
that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail.
Write a letter.

Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best
thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so
deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you
would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen.
Be a big brother or sister.

All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well
will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is
so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody
in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.

It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years
ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it
is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.

I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it
back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do
that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in
the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of
life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy
and passion as it ought to be lived.




Hope.

"All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
- Romans 8:25(NKJV).

http://findingsupergirl.blogspot.com

TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

By Dr. John C. Maxwell

A balanced stance is a key ingredient for success in sports. It's hard to hit a curveball, make a hole-in-one, serve an ace or shoot a free throw if your body is not positioned correctly (legs set wide apart, head upright, back fairly straight, center of gravity evenly distributed, knees slightly bent—you get the picture).

According to HumanKinetics.com, some variation of what is known is the "athletic stance" is common to most sports because it is the "most prepared position for the body to receive a force." It is, in fact, the "strongest position."

But as important as the right stance is in an athletic event, it's even more critical in life. When I talk about a person's life stance, I'm referring to his or her overall frame of reference. Stated differently, your life stance is the set of attitudes, assumptions and expectations that you hold about yourself, about other people and about life in general. It's the way that you consistently look at people, events and circumstances; whether you tend to be trusting or suspicious, cheerful or gloomy, optimistic or pessimistic, friendly or reserved.

A person's life stance can be influenced by a number of factors: family background, personality type, educational opportunities (or lack thereof) and unexpected tragedies, to name a few. We weren't given a choice about many of these things, but there is one aspect of our frame of reference over which we have total control, and that is the decision to take the high road on the journey through life.

What does it mean to take the high road? It's very simple. Don't keep score. Forgive others quickly. Learn to serve. Don't get even.

From that short description, I'm sure you can deduce that the high road isn't the busiest highway a person can take through life. It's an amazing road to travel, but it definitely is a road less traveled because it requires people to think and do things that are not natural or common. The good news is that, when people deliberately choose to travel this road, they become instruments of grace to others and recipients of grace for themselves.

Let me give you an example. In the early 1980s, when I was just starting out as a writer, a friend of mine gave a very memorable presentation at a seminar. I liked his talk so much I got the tape and had it transcribed. A few years later, when I was working on a book called Be All You Can Be, I came across the transcription. I couldn't remember where the material had originated, but since some of it fit perfectly with what I was writing, I decided to include it in my book. I didn't leave out the source on purpose, but I did leave it out.

After the book was published, this same friend and I were having dinner when he told me he had been shocked to find that I had used his illustration in my book without giving him credit for it. Needless to say, I was heartsick over what I had done. "It was you!" I told him. "You're the guy who told that story. How can I make this right? How can I apologize?"

As I was hastily trying to come up with a way to fix my mistake, my friend stopped me and said, "John, don't worry about it. I know your heart. You're totally forgiven. We'll never bring the subject up again."

I will never, ever forget those words. They had such redeeming value to me. It was truly life changing to realize that I was the recipient of grace from someone who had chosen to take the high road. And from that point on, I determined that, whenever I was in a similar position—whenever I was right and the person I was facing was clearly wrong—I would win by taking the high road too.

You see, the greatest victory you'll ever have is not over another person. The greatest victory you'll ever have is over your natural inclination to win over that person. When you win but choose to walk away without declaring the win (giving someone a graceful exit or another chance instead), it is absolutely amazing what it will begin to do for you internally.

Again, taking the high road isn't always easy, and it doesn't always come naturally. But, like the balanced stance that lays the foundation for athletic success, it truly is the "strongest position" to take on the journey through life.


This article is used by permission from Dr. John C. Maxwell's free monthly e-newsletter 'Leadership Wired' available at www.MaximumImpact.com."